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Concept
John Ledyard
Summary
John Ledyard (November 1751 – 10 January 1789) was an American explorer and adventurer.
Ledyard was born in Groton, Connecticut, in November 1751. He was the first child of Abigail Youngs Ledyard and Capt. John Ledyard Jr, son of Squire John Ledyard Sr. A day or so after the child was born, Capt. John boarded his father's ship and sailed for the West Indies. Three years later Ledyard joined his grandfather in Hartford, Connecticut, where he attended school. His grandfather died just before Ledyard turned 20 (Squire Ledyard died in September 1771; grandson John III was about three months shy of 21 years of age at the Squire's death).
Ledyard briefly attended Dartmouth College (which was then only 3 years old), arriving on 22 April 1772.
He left for two months without permission in August and September of that year, led a mid-winter camping expedition, and finally abandoned the college for good in May 1773.
Memorably, he fashioned his own dugout canoe, and paddled it for a week down the Connecticut River to his grandfather's farm. Today, the Ledyard Canoe Club, a division of the Dartmouth Outing Club, sponsors an annual canoe trip down the Connecticut River in his honor.
At loose ends, he decided to travel; "I allot myself a seven-year's ramble more," he wrote to a cousin. He shipped as a common seaman on a year-long trading voyage to Gibraltar, the Barbary Coast, and the Caribbean.
On his next voyage, he jumped ship in Portsmouth, England, but was soon impressed and forced to join the British Navy as a marine.
In June 1776, Ledyard joined Captain James Cook's third and final voyage as a British marine.
The expedition lasted until October 1780.
During these four years, its two ships stopped at the Sandwich Islands, the Cape of Good Hope, the Prince Edward Islands off South Africa, the Kerguelen Islands, Tasmania, New Zealand, the Cook Islands, Tonga, Tahiti, and then Hawaii (first documented by the expedition). It continued to the northwest coast of North America, making Ledyard perhaps the first U.S.
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